She half wades, half swims toward the crimson tendrils that mark where Anna, taking Kyra with her, had sunk from view. A quick shallow dive, and she has them both, one lifeless, the other struggling to break clear of her mother’s body. Wey Chen raises Anna’s limp form back to the surface, while Kyra emerges on her own seconds later, choking and gasping for breath, her coat still drenched with Anna’s blood. “Don’t scream,” Wey Chen whispers, nodding toward the two dead men draped half off the drifting rowboat. “I stopped them from shooting you, but a bunch of their partners are still around.” She rolls Anna onto her back. “Help me with your mother.”
One of the bullets has ripped a trench across the front of Anna’s throat. The wound wells up with blood, and jets of scarlet the circumference of pencil leads shoot several feet into the air. Midst the carnage, Wey Chen spots the orifice of Anna’s severed trachea and the jagged ends of a partially torn jugular. Her medical training takes over, and she prioritizes what damage must be dealt with first. The good news--Anna’s heart is still pumping. The bad--they’ll have to clear her airway and ventilate her lungs or she’ll stay drowned. And unless they clamp the damaged vessels, she’ll bleed out in under five minutes. “Help me!” Wey Chen repeats, half-swimming, half crawling for shore, and dragging Anna with her. “There’s a trauma kit in the trunk of my car.” Intubation equipment, IVs, artificial blood products, morphine, intravenous saline, antibiotics--no assassins left home without them.
Kyra doesn’t move. Shivering and crying, she simply stares after her mother, pupils pumped wide with terror.
“You have to trust me, Kyra, or we’ll lose her,” Wey Chen says. She reaches shallower water, continuing to support Anna’s head with one hand, still using the other to apply pressure on the hemorrhaging vessels. “Now, Kyra! We must lift her onto land.”
Kyra tries to speak. Her mouth opens a few times, but no words come out.
“Were you hit?” Wey Chen asks, fearing the worst.
“No.” The girl’s voice barely makes it above a whisper. She remains transfixed by the blood pulsing from her mother’s neck.
“Come here.” Wey Chen keeps her tone calm, not wanting to make the girl’s panic worse, but an inner clock ticks off every lost second that takes more of Anna’s chances with it.
Kyra swims toward her, tears pouring down her cheeks.
“Kyra, listen to me. I’m a doctor. We can save your mother. It’s what Daddy would want--”
“You know my father?” Kyra says, her gaze shifting to meet Wey Chen’s.
“Yes. But we can talk about him later. Right now, we get your mother up on land. Please, lift her legs!”
Together they carry Anna through the bulrushes and lay her on a patch of grass. The jets of blood from her neck have lessened. Bad sign.
“Press here,” Wey Chen says, guiding Kyra’s trembling fingers to the points in the mangled neck where pressure would best stop the flow. Placing her own fist on the middle of Anna’s stomach just below the rib cage, she gives a sharp upward thrust. A shower of blood, gelatinous clots, and macerated tissue blow out the severed end of the trachea. Twenty seconds later, she’s retrieved what they’ll need from the back of her van. Pulling on latex gloves, more for grip in the slipperiness of the wound than out of any hope to maintain a sterile field, she feels through the still oozing tissues and grabs hold of the trachea, grasping the ragged opening between her thumb and index finger. “With your other hand, push on your mother’s stomach, like I did”
Kyra’s pupils pulse wider. “But--”
“Do it!”
The girl obeys. Another shower of blood, much smaller than the first, arches into the air.
Wey Chen, using her own free hand, grabs an endotrachial tube and feeds its tip into the severed airway. “Push her stomach again.”
This time a hollow wheeze full of moist crackles, like someone blowing through a recently used hose, comes out the end of the tube.
“Good,” Wey Chen says, and injects a syringeful of air into a small portal, inflating the tiny cuff that secures the airway in place. Sealing the free end with her mouth, she gives four sharp breaths, each one causing Anna’s chest to rise. “Now you do it--once every five seconds,” she orders.
Kyra hesitates, her eyes as wide with fright as ever.
“Look, it’s just like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” Wey Chen tells her, speaking softly. “I know you’re a brave girl. I also know you can be strong, the same as your father and mother.”
Kyra frowns. “Why are you helping us? You’re with the men who shot her.”
“Because I have a daughter. If I save you and your mother, your Daddy will help me save my little Jade.
“Where is my father?”
“We’ll talk later. Right now, you breathe for your mother.”
The girl hesitatingly leans forward, takes the tube in her mouth, and blows, causing Anna’s chest to rise.
Wey Chen turns her attention to the arterial bleeders. Unable to see their source, she feels through the bellies of torn muscle and finds the tiny jets of warm blood, the pressure of their streams palpable against her finger tips, even through latex. Using hemostats, she squeezes off the severed vessels, one by one, then uses larger clamps to shut down the open jugular. Each of these tasks is completed with the precise, critical-care skills that have always been her forte. She has the fingers for it--slim, long, and steady. They can ply or separate tissues with a touch so soft that there is nary a bruise, and the various cutting tools of the trade--scissors, scalpels--seem to simply behave in her hands.
In the real event, the thought that she’d also used those same hands and techniques for the taking of lives never once intruded on her concentration. Long ago she had developed a strategy to keep it a non-issue, at least during the act of performing procedures. Whether working on a victim or patient, she kept raising her technical prowess with surgical instruments to a level that so engaged her, it became an escape in itself, a reprieve, something to get lost in, and blocked out all considerations of conscience. But in the all-seeing tyranny of her flashback, she’s forced to confront the hypocrisy of such mind games, and remembers the full extent she’s used these skills to commit murder.
Kyra watches her over the top of the endotracheal tube. Having settled into a steady rhythm in delivering breath after breath to Anna, her worried stare begs for reassurance about her mother’s fate.
There is none to give. Anna’s pulse remains weak. She isn’t breathing on her own. And they can’t stay here. “What house were you hiding in?” Wey Chen asks Kyra, compressing pads of gauze over the still oozing wound, careful not to dislodge the dozens of hemostats that dangle from it like quills.
“Directly across the road.”
“Is there a key?”
Between breaths, Kyra reaches into her mother’s coat and retrieves it, along with a soggy bundle of money.
“Keep this safe.” Wey Chen takes the key but hands back the wad of bills. “We’ll need it for supplies.” She pulls a black ventilation bag from the medical kit and, after allowing Kyra to give Anna a few extra breaths, connects it to the endotracheal tube. A hard squeeze expands the chest, verifying no leaks. “Back to you,” she says, indicating Kyra should take over the bag. “With your other hand, keep pressure on the gauze. You’ll have to stretch up, because I’ll be carrying her.”
The surrounding fog creates a sphere from which they can neither see nor be seen beyond a thirty-foot radius, and the distant roar of surf covers up any noise she and Kyra make bringing Anna back to the house. Four of the remaining shooters are still out there patrolling the beach, Wey Chen thinks, and the final two stand watch by the causeway entrance. I will have to take care of them all.
Three minutes later they have Anna on the floor of the living room. Kyra continues to compress the wound and squeeze the Ambou bag. A few minutes more, and Wey Chen’s gotten IVs into Anna, having sneaked back across the road to retrieve the trauma kit. In fifteen, she’s infused he
r with a few liters of saline, a broad spectrum antibiotic, and two units of artificial plasma. Despite these measures, Anna’s heart is running out of blood to pump. Her skin remains fish-belly gray and is just as clammy. Her pulse races so fast that there are barely intervals between beats. She needs monitoring, oxygen, multiple transfusions, a respirator, blood tests--in short, a mini ICU.
There’s no other choice. Wey Chen must risk a call to her old contact. He’d have the means to help, however much it might leave her vulnerable to him. “Continue to pump and press,” she orders Kyra. “I’ve a few things to take care of. Do you know a deserted barn or building closed for the winter that we could break into near here?”
Kyra thinks for a few seconds. “There’s an old warehouse where people store big boats at the yacht club. It’s across the mud flats, near the highway on the mainland. Nobody goes there this time of year...”
The blast from machine guns shooting out the locked door of the hologram chamber vanquished her flashback, and the multicolored images of the chimera reappeared around her.
Soldiers burst into the room, ordering her to lie face down on the floor, their weapons leveled at her head.
Still gripping the phone, Wey Chen reached for her pistol and pointed it at the slowly advancing men, not even bothering to release the safety. “I’m sorry, Jade, my love,” she whispered, seconds before they exploded her world to white.
Chapter 34
Fifty hours later, Thursday, February 5, 2009, 1:05 A.M. EST
Wells Beach, Maine
Terry Ryder followed the yellow tape across the road, over the lawn, and down to the bulrushes that bordered the tidal flats. Under a starless sky, the water shimmered black as oil.
That’s where the blood trail ended.
But not his search.
Huddled inside his jacket, he pulled the collar up against a stiff onshore wind. His breath turned silver in the frosty air before it streaked away into the darkness, and a steady roll of surf thudded ashore on the other side of the spit.
Wey Chen had stood here, then claimed she last saw Anna running through the muck toward the mainland. But a living room floor soaked with Anna’s blood made that feat unlikely.
When telling a lie, begin with the truth, the general had always taught him. It was Spook-think 101, and from the looks of the gang Wey Chen had been hanging out with in Guangdong, she’d have been to the same school.
So maybe there were enough truths in her lies to tell him what she really had done here, and that might lead him to where she’d hid her bargaining chip. It’s already in the US, she’d said. The only place in America that he knew for sure she’d visited recently was here.
He pulled his collar tighter and hunched his shoulders higher against the wind. Definitely not dressed for winter.
A few hours ago he and Jade had stepped off the Siberian Express at its last stop--a new Aerflot cargo terminal in Portland, Maine. Released from their clutches was more like it. Bori’s old network had not been thrilled at the news of Yuri’s death. At first, they’d held him responsible. But logic prevailed, after Terry convinced them that their interests lay in leaving him alive and and at large to expose the Chinese involvement. “Doing a hit on old business associates will be the last of their worries once their secret is out.You no longer want to be targets? I’m your best bet.” He even got his lap top, phones, identity papers, credit cards, and passport handed back to him--everything he’d left in the safekeeping of co-pilot Katya before heading into Guangdong Province. He offered them an endorsement: The Siberian Express--better with luggage than American Airlines.
But unlike all the other stops where suitable bribes had been paid and they’d been handed off to the next siloviki, no one was at Portland to meet them. If Yuri had intended Maine to be his final destination, Terry figured, it was because he’d thought Anna would be here.
Maybe finding out what Wey Chen did with Anna and what she did with the bargaining chip were one and the same puzzle.
He walked back along the trampled grass where the FBI had investigated the hell out of the trail that they’d assumed led down to the tidal flats. A distant street lamp cast the divots of their boot prints in shadow, making the terrain appear pockmarked.
What if the Feds had gotten it backward? In his mind’s eye he ran a scenario where the blood had dripped off Anna coming up from the flats and returning to the house.
Wey Chen could have worked on her wounds there. After all, she’d have been desperate to save her. With Anna alive and in her hands, she would have far more control in keeping Yuri motivated to deliver Jade.
So what then? She’d have to evacuate her patient to safe keeping, probably in the back of her van. Or if Anna had died, she would dispose of her body where it couldn’t be found, so she could still claim to Yuri that his wife was alive.
From the road he turned and looked out over the flats again. He pictured Anna struggling through the weeds, making for the islands of bull rushes, Kyra following behind her, exactly as Wey Chen had described.
Maybe that part had been true. Wey Chen did see them trying to get away, then . . .
Then what? One of the hit men shot them, or a least shot Anna. There’d been no blood found that belonged to Kyra. Either the girl was alive and unharmed at that point, or had been killed outright and left to sink in the mud.
He peered into the darkness. If Anna had initially been fleeing out there, where had she been headed?
Even through the murk, he could see lines of white docks scattered over the far shore like bleached bones, and behind them were buildings the size of barns. A winter storage area for boats?
He walked back up the road to where he’d left his car running with the heater on, and leaned into the rear seat.
Jade slept peacefully, curled under blankets that the Budget agent had kindly lent him when he’d rented the vehicle. Ever since they’d boarded the first of many planes over two days ago, he’d made sure that the girl ate regular meals, got enough to drink, and had warm blankets to sleep under. Yet she still hadn’t spoken.
He climbed behind the wheel and drove another half mile north toward the tip of the spit, passing Anna’s own condominium en route. It was completely dark, as were the surrounding houses. The FBI, having drawn their own conclusions about her demise, had obviously lost interest in the site and pulled out.
A few hundred yards more, the road ended at the rock-lined channel through which boats from the yacht club could reach the ocean.
He pulled to a stop and looked out over the waves.
In the murk of night, the rollers, barely visible, appeared cold and forbidding, not at all as inviting as the glittering surf back home.
It would be a quick death. He’d be hypothermic before he drowned.
The thought took him by surprise.
He’d never even considered that way out before. It was the exhaustion talking. Exhaustion makes you think things you’d never do. Added to that were the claspers, tentacles and globules gaining ground, eating into his judgment.
Never, you say? Let’s see how Carla does, then get back to me, a taunting, unfamiliar self goaded.
“Fuck off, damn it!” he said, speaking barely above a whisper so as not to wake Jade, and banished the rogue voice. By now his frequent bursts of outrage at being squeezed into a persona he didn’t like actually helped him regain his focus. Yes, he was terrified about losing Carla. And he’d give his life for her if it would help. But suicide? Never. Blind to the odds, head down, act by act--that’s how I’m gonna’ goddamn well choose to die!
So far Carla had beat the odds. She hadn’t “coned” as the pressures built up inside her skull, and she survived the air ambulance trip to Southern Alberta. “Still sedated, stable, and holding her own,” Dr. Sandra Dey, stem cell specialist and director of the Human Research Unit at Regeneration Pharmaceuticals told him a few hours ago. “Unfortunately, like everywhere, we’re short of the meds that will keep her that way,” she added, “and wha
t we’re planning will take time.”
Unfortunately. God, he hated that word. It sounded obscenely trivial when applied to the loss of life or limb. Unfortunately was what you said when speaking of a broken, prized piece of china, or rain on an outdoor wedding, not Carla’s chances of dying.
But he’d said nothing, choosing instead to do an end run around unfortunately. Mannitol, anesthetic agents, analgesics, immunosuppressants--they’d all become the latest contraband of choice on the international smuggling circuit. After he’d rung off, Terry dialed up his new contacts in Bori’s old network, and evoked his fee in goods--delivery to Dr. Sandra Dey at the Human Research Unit, southern Alberta. Still, all the mannitol in the world would only buy Carla’s life an hour at a time. She needed the Hail Mary, soonest.
He gripped the wheel to keep his own hands from shaking, then swallowed some more of the painkillers he’d picked up at an all night pharmacist in Portland. The tremor and headaches had definitely gotten worse over the last twenty-four hours. He zeroed in on the black waves as they crashed into the channel walls, finding the rhythmic noise soothing.
Off in the distance, the famous house on the promontory was ablaze with light. Out on the ocean, not far from the point of land, several sets of tiny, green and red warning lamps rose and fell on the swells.
Quite the flotilla.
He dug out the satellite unit and punched in the codes.
“Madame President?”
“Dr. Ryder.” She sounded alert, not someone who’d been wakened at an obscene hour. “Any luck?”
“Not so far. Your people are sure Wey Chen said nothing to the CDC hotline before she got cut off?”
“Not a thing.”
He couldn’t believe that Jade’s mother would take the hiding place to her grave without leaving some cryptic clue to at least point him in the right direction.
“How’s the girl, Ryder?” she asked.
“Sleeping.”
“You don’t need help? At least let me send someone to take care of her. I’d rather you be completely free to work.”
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